politics
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Capitalism can work fine when subject to the pressures that keep things reasonable.
The pressures were removed. The system broke.
Republicans now believe capitalism is the problem, completely ignoring the fact that THEY FUCKING BROKE IT.
Capitalism isn’t perfect. It’s not even great. But it can work if you fucking let it.
Capitalism's fundamental flaw is that it exploits and feeds people's greed. It requires an external system of regulation to ensure that the vast majority of people aren't left with so little that murdering the people responsible for their suffering doesn't seem like a better option than continuing in the system.
One could envision a system that uses mutually aligned incentives to ensure that when you succeed, we all do better, and when I succeed, we all do better. What does that system look like? It looks like a flattened hierarchy, where it is practically impossible for one person to accumulate enough wealth to influence national politics. I think it likely looks like state that guarantees healthcare, education, food, privacy, housing, and a job if you want it. Why does it look like that, because all of those things are neccesary to a happy, fulfilled, and productive life. If you have more people optimally outputting, your economy has strength and resiliency. With a modicome of smart public investment, you can fiscally guarentee that in perpetuity. In order to achieve it you need a government worth trusting, we don't have one, but we can build one.
If nothing else, the modern era of capital accumulation demonstrates that there are so many more resources in the world than people to use them. What if we just let them? Since the war on Iran started the US has spent more than 1/3 of what the UN estimates it would cost to end world hunger (37B/97B).
I noticed you said " and a job if you want it" are you saying that people will have like a UBI in this scenario?
I've always wondered how you would actually be able to find people to do jobs if no one had to work like surely non of the nurses working 20+ hour shifts or sewage plant workers working with waste all day would continue to do that if they didn't have to.
Would you have to make it to where people volunteered every so often or how would that work? And who would work the government that picked the volunteers to do it would there be some incentive for doing that?
I want a utopia I just wonder if its truly possible because of that.
I may be naive, but a life a idle leisure is not satisfying long term to many. Even the wealthiest people today are not content to idle their days away on private islands. They work and take on projects and set themselves goals. I think it is intrinsic in our nature (not all, but a vast majority) to want to build, create, and improve our lives and that of those around us. The pursuit of happiness is tied closely to the ability to enrich the lives we hold dear.
I think that part of the reason idle languish seems appealing is that we are worked too hard and our attention stretched too thin. Every choice under capitalism about how to spend our time has to weigh a vague life and death decision about how to feed and house ourselves in perpetuity. There is no expectation that the welfare safety net will catch us (in the US).
There is plenty of good work that needs to be done, and with free education (including vocational training) there is no shortage of skilled labor. With a surplus of labor we can shorten working hours. So why not have a jobs guarantee? If you are aimless but want to contribute to society, society can put the pathway to build what it needs in front of you and give the tools to achieve it. If in a couple years you decide thats not what you want to do, you can retrain or simply go do something else.
UBI is meant to keep you from being homeless and starving, it’s not meant to let you not work.
The problem people have is that under capitalism? We made being employed SUCK ASS. Jobs could be safe, fun, fulfilling, and well compensated; but all the capitalists by nature decided to do little of any of that as possible; and to make me sure you’re locked in, your heathcare is tied to your job. If you want to get ahead, you have to give your money back by investing, and if you don’t lose it all you pay a huge tax on it that was meant for controlling rich people but also takes from the little guy as well.
You basically get nothing u til you retire, and now they’re coming for that too. They wanna eliminate social security and they wanna fuck up our 401k by tying it to AI which they are trying to use to take over computing entirely.
If you ask me the government should pay for all of it, for everyone. 3 trillion for Israel to kill brown people, and they can’t even fix fuckin sidewalks in my town. Get fucked.
The problem is the capitalists become the government officials that should be the check.
This is true in other systems too btw, the only real check has ever been the power of the people to stand up and reset the corruption.
It’s a cycle that’s incredibly old, we’re just at the elite looting stage before the revolution.
Whether we end up with capitalism again or something doesn’t matter, what we really need is something new that encourages civic participation to hold elites accountable. I have no idea what this is, but I know blaming capitalism alone is only a convenient scapegoat, it’s not a true root cause.